Show Prep: Mon, Dec. 22

The University of Saskatchewan’s Colin Whitfield says that rising beaver populations over the past 100 years means more beaver dams to create shallow ponds. These ponds, however, causes methane to be released from shallow standing waters. Whitfield says that there is 200 times more methane from beaver ponds today than there was around 1900.

He added that he wished “they’d spoken to me first,” so he could tell them not to set a bad precedent by caving into hackers’ threats. He explained that this could eventually lead to self-censorship if the media did not want to offend “somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended.”

“A lawsuit filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana on behalf of South Bend Common Council President and 6th District Council member Oliver Davis challenges a recently-passed city ordinance that regulates both publicly controlled and privately maintained social media, Internet and electronic communications of council members, saying the ordinance violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

For just the second time in nearly six years, the Obama administration has prosecuted a power company for the deaths of federally protected birds from wind turbines, which kill hundreds of thousands of birds every year.

While millions of Americans began their holiday travels last Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency had an early Christmas gift for the coal industry: a new regulation on coal ash from power plants.

America and the West are subjected nonstop to a barrage of hate speech from the intelligentsia. Hate speech leads to hate crimes, here as everywhere. Few people have faced up to the extent of the hate crimes and hate speech against the West. The murder of the two New York City policemen Saturday is only the tip of the iceberg.

President Raúl Castro declared victory for the Cuban Revolution on Saturday in a wide-ranging speech, thanking President Obama for “a new chapter” while also reaffirming that restored relations with the United States did not mean the end of Communist rule in Cuba.

The Christmas season offers some of the greatest television ever made, from touching commercials to holiday episodes of your favorite shows to seasonal specials. There is always something available for families to gather and watch this time of year.